The biggest thing in fly-fishing since nylon leaders, fly lines made with something other than silk, and graphite fly rods is a new casting technique that allows long, precise casts without the usual room required for traditional casting methods.

Just a decade from now, the next generation of fly anglers will look at old-timers – us – and say things like, “Really? You were around when one-handed spey casting began?”

Veteran fly-fishermen are yelling, “Hold on, there! Spey casting has been around since the very beginning of the sport on English and Scottish salmon rivers.”

And that is true. Fly-fishing historians will tell you that spey casting has its roots on Scottish salmon rivers where long, two-handed fly rods and simple spey casts were used to reach the fish, mend line and swim flies when other techniques were inadequate. Spey-casting techniques have been used across the pond for well over 100 years. While never really popular in this country, spey casting has become the rage over the past decade among steelhead and salmon anglers who discovered that the big two-handed rods and accompanying techniques were just as useful here for all of the same reasons that made the techniques a staple in the British Isles.

“Most anglers incorrectly associate spey casting only with steelhead and salmon and two-handed rods,” said Simon Gawesworth, a transplanted British angler who’s now marketing manager for Rio Products, a fly-line manufacturer in Twin Falls, Idaho.

“The technique evolved with two-handed rods in Scottish salmon rivers, but the techniques work just as well for small-stream brook trout.”

Gawesworth, who has a new book titled “Single-Handed Spey Casting,” published by Stackpole, tells fly anglers they all know the “crudest, most rudimentary of spey casts” – the roll cast – but that it’s just one of a vast number of spey casts, which are more descriptively called “change-of-direction casts.”

In this country, fly-casting is mostly accomplished by snapping the line off the water in front of the angler and into the air behind the angler with the rod, then crisply driving it back forward again. It’s the weight of the line that carries the fly and leader along. With this technique, as much room is required behind the angler as out over the water, where the fish are waiting for that fly. While this is likely not a problem on lakes when the angler is on a boat or in a float tube, it’s frequently a problem when the angler is fishing a stream or river. With few exceptions, most river banks are covered with brush and trees, making standard fly-casting techniques problematic.

Most fly anglers have learned how to do rudimentary roll casts so they can fish inside those vegetative tunnels to reach trout, steelhead and salmon, most of us with mixed success.

Fly-tackle predates baitcasting and spinning gear, and it was this new gear’s ease at hurling heavy baits and lures to fish without the need for massive amounts of casting space that made them instantly popular with anglers. For certain applications, however, the delivery of light artificial lures (flies, specifically) to the water, and then to float them naturally on top of or through the water column like insects or other food forms, there’s still nothing that beats traditional fly tackle.

This brings us right back to the difficulty of reaching a trout feeding on flies along the far bank when there’s no back-casting room.

While the bulk of the interest in spey casting has been with Western steelhead and salmon anglers, Gawesworth said he believes “there’s vast potential in it” for all fly anglers, especially anglers who mostly fish one-handed fly rods and use conventional overhead casting techniques.

Gawesworth will be giving demonstrations of one-handed spey-casting techniques and talking with fly anglers about these techniques during both days of this year’s annual Pasadena Fly Fishing Show held 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the Pasadena Center, 300 E. Green St., Pasadena.

Admission is $15 for one day or $25 for a two-day pass. You can get more information on the show at www.flyfishingshow.com.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.